Helen of Troy | Page 5

upon the ground

I saw two winged shadows side by side,
And all the world's spring
passion stifled me.
Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,
No
lonely place where thou hast never trod,
No desert thou hast left
uncarpeted
With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.
In
many guises didst thou come to me;
I saw thee by the maidens while
they danced,
Phaon allured me with a look of thine,
In Anactoria I
knew thy grace,
I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;
But never
wholly, soul and body mine,
Didst thou bid any love me as I loved.

Now I have found the peace that fled from me;
Close, close, against
my heart I hold my world.
Ah, Love that made my life a lyric cry,

Ah, Love that tuned my lips to lyres of thine,
I taught the world thy
music, now alone
I sing for one who falls asleep to hear.
Marianna Alcoforando
(The Portuguese Nun -- 1640-1723)
The sparrows wake beneath the convent eaves;
I think I have not slept
the whole night through.
But I am old; the aged scarcely know
The
times they wake and sleep, for life burns down;
They breathe the
calm of death before they die.
The long night ends, the day comes
creeping in,
Showing the sorrows that the darkness hid,
The bended
head of Christ, the blood, the thorns,

The wall's gray stains of damp,
the pallet bed
Where little Sister Marta dreams of saints,
Waking
with arms outstretched imploringly
That seek to stay a vision's
vanishing.
I never had a vision, yet for me
Our Lady smiled while

all the convent slept
One winter midnight hushed around with snow --

I thought she might be kinder than the rest,
And so I came to kneel
before her feet,
Sick with love's sorrow and love's bitterness.
But
when I would have made the blessed sign,
I found the water frozen in
the font,
And touched but ice within the carved stone.
The saints
had hid themselves away from me,
Leaving the windows black
against the night;
And when I sank upon the altar steps,
Before the
Virgin Mother and her Child,
The last, pale, low-burnt taper flickered
out,
But in the darkness, smooth and fathomless,
Still twinkled like
a star the holy lamp
That cast a dusky glow upon her face.
Then
through the numbing cold peace fell on me,
Submission and the
gracious gift of tears,
For when I looked, Oh! blessed miracle,
Her
lips had parted and Our Lady smiled!
And then I knew that Love is
worth its pain
And that my heart was richer for his sake,
Since lack
of love is bitterest of all.
The day is broad awake -- the first long beam
Of level sun finds
Sister Marta's face,
And trembling there it lights a timid smile
Upon
the lips that say so many prayers,
And have no words for hate and
none for love.
But when she passes where her prayers have gone,

Will God not smile a little sadly then,
And send her back with gentle
words to earth
That she may hold a child against her breast
And feel
its little hands upon her hair?
We weep before the Blessed Mother's
shrine,
To think upon her sorrows, but her joys
What nun could
ever know a tithing of?
The precious hours she watched above His
sleep
Were worth the fearful anguish of the end.
Yea, lack of love is
bitterest of all;
Yet I have felt what thing it is to know

One thought
forever, sleeping or awake;
To say one name whose sweetness grows
so strange
That it might work a spell on those who weep;
To feel
the weight of love upon my heart
So heavy that the blood can
scarcely flow.
Love comes to some unlooked-for, quietly,
As when
at twilight, with a soft surprise,
We see the new-born crescent in the
blue;
And unto others love is planet-like,
A cold and placid gleam

that wavers not,
And there are those who wait the call of love

Expectant of his coming, as we watch
To see the east grow pallid ere
the moon
Lifts up her flower-like head against the night.
Love came
to me as comes a cruel sun,
That on some rain-drenched morning,
when the leaves
Are bowed beneath their clinging weight of drops,

Tears through the mist, and burns with fervent heat
The tender
grasses and the meadow flowers;
Then suddenly the heavy clouds
close in
And through the dark the thunder's muttering
Is drowned
amid the dashing of the rain.
But I have seen my day grow calm again.
The sun sets slowly on a
peaceful world,
And sheds a quiet light across the fields.
Guenevere
I was a queen, and I have lost my crown;
A wife, and I have broken
all my vows;
A lover, and I ruined him I loved: --
There is no other
havoc left to do.
A little month ago I was a queen,
And mothers
held their babies up to see
When I came riding out of Camelot.
The
women smiled, and all the world smiled too.
And now, what woman's
eyes would smile on me?
I still am beautiful, and yet what child

Would think of me as some high, heaven-sent thing,
An angel, clad in
gold and miniver?
The world would run from me, and